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IKSLM
September 25th, 2019, 21:17
Say you were making a new DK game... how would you design the combat in terms of creature attributes that have a direct impact on the outcome of the battle?

Would you go the DK1 way with attributes such as defence/luck/strength/skill/dexterity/speed... or would it be like DK2 with "reduced" number of attributes, or something completely different?

What makes the combat interesting (ignoring the visuals), less predictable (more spells, more RNG...)?

YourMaster
September 26th, 2019, 00:16
I don't think stats by themselves are what make or break combat, but I would do it a bit differently. My goal would be to have some units do better than others against specific unit types.

For example by having a proper armor stat you can have a armored unit that's almost invulnerable to weak blows. So even if you have countless weak or fast units, you can't harm him and you need a few slow but heavy hitters. And likewise you have a high health-low armor unit that can tank those heavy blows but will quickly succumb to lots of minor attacks.
Then you top it of by also having a magic resistance stat and have units do magic or normal damage.

And have synergies between units. So units that work together somehow, casters that buff other units, just all round weak units that increase the effectiveness of the strong units so that a diverse army is more effective than a army of 'dark knights' if you will.

This way the game can revolve more about trying to get the creatures that you want. And that's what a new DK really needs I believe, ways of attracting creatures that go beyond 'build 25 tiles of each room and get all creatures'. Mechanics where you use low tier units to get higher tiered units in your dungeons.